Israel and Gaza: Enough Is Enough

November 19, 2012

Israel and Gaza: Enough is Enough

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

All the usual suspects are cheering on their respective sides in the latest struggle between Israel and Palestine being fought out at the expense of some Israeli and more Palestinian civilian lives. I’ve been overwhelmed with sadness at the tragic loss of lives and harm to the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians, and outraged at all those who continue to justify their side and demean the other, implicitly cheering on the violence even as they officially deplore it! Enough is enough. Stop the violence immediately!

First step: the international community, led by the U.S., should impose an immediate cease-fire on all sides of the struggle, and should introduce an international peace force to restrain and if necessary arrest anyone involved in any side of this struggle who is acting to continue the violence. That force should be equally charged with arresting any military figures on the Israeli side or guerrilla forces on the Palestinian side that are attempting to engage in hostilities.

Second step: hold an international conference to create a politically and economically viable Palestinian state living in peace with Israel (details on what that would look like are in my bookEmbracing Israel/Palestine which you can order online at www.tikkun.org/eip, or on Kindle format at Amazon.com).

Third step: begin a truth and reconciliation process to coincide with implementing the creation of a politically and economically viable Palestinian state.

So how do we get there, given the apparent willingness of everyone from Obama to the most liberal Dems in the Congress to want to be seen as giving Israel carte blanche to do what it will to punish Hamas, and even the normally predictable peace voices are keeping a very low profile?

We have to move the focus from who did what to whom and how badly should we feel to the more significant question: how do we use this moment to push beyond the usual cacophony of righteous believers in the goodness of their side’s cause so that we can realize that the issue for all humanity is how to put love, kindness and caring for each other and for the earth on our collective agenda, realizing that the human race simply cannot allow itself to be distracted by outrageous and endless vicious nationalist struggles.

Yes, there are steps that could be taken to guarantee a lasting cease-fire. Israel could offer to end the blockade of Gaza (which in any event has been ineffective in keeping Hamas from gaining long-range missile capabilities) and end all drone over flights in both the West Bank and Gaza and all targeted assassinations in exchange for Hamas agreeing to allow international monitors search all forms of entry to Gaza to prevent that military hardware from being imported and simultaneously agreeing to prevent all future bombardment of S’derot and any other Israeli targets and to punish those engaged in rogue actions of that sort (e.g. Islamic Jihad or whoever else tries to provoke war by shooting at Israel from Gaza). This same force should be policing West Bank settlers some of whom are committed to disrupting any peace process that might lead to a reduction in the West Bank settlements.

But no such moves are likely to work without a fundamental change of attitude: a new approach of compassion for each side by the other, the adoption of a zero tolerance of war as a solution to anyone’s problems, and the replacing of the strategy of “we’ll show them how tough we are” attitude that I call a strategy of domination with a new strategy of generosity (“we’ll show them how much we can care for them beyond all reasonable expectations”). Cancel the endless attempts in the media for each side to try to prove that their side is the righteous victim and the other side the “evil other.” Most important: we need to develop a societal wide therapy to help Israelis overcome their greatest fear: the fear of being seen as a “fryar,” someone who is too optimistic about the decency of other human beings and the potential or turning enemies into friends. Until this Israeli pathology is overcome, no amount of rationality is likely to emerge in Israeli discourse or poltics.

The first steps in this process: it is time the Israelis acknowledge the cost of their Occupation and denial of fundamental democratic and human rights on the Palestinian people. Much of the Israeli media gives little attention to the ongoing violence directed at Palestinians, such as outright stealing of land from Palestinian farmers, IDF suppression of non-violent demonstrations against the Occupation, and holding Palestinians without charges. Targeted assassinations now carried out by drones whose daily presence in the skies over Gaza make that tiny area the world’s largest outdoor prison. Ironically, except for the tiny percentage of Israelis who read Ha’aretz, most Israelis don’t even have a clue about what the daily oppressive reality is like for people in the West Bank, much less for the million plus human beings living in Gaza.

The majority of Israelis go about daily life oblivious to the suffering that the status quo generates until Palestinians launch their (thankfully mostly ineffective) missiles against hapless citizens in S’derot and other southern Israeli towns. And when Israelis flex their overwhelming military muscles, the leaders (sic) of the organized Jewish community in the U.S. jump into line, screaming that Israel’s existence is in danger (a complete fantasy) and that the U.S. must support its “ally” (which meanwhile is scheming how to drag the US into a war with Iran).

While it is true, as Palestinians and their global supporters purport, that Israel can (and does) murder far more Palestinians than Hamas murders Israeli civilians, nonetheless, the murder of civilians on either side only builds resentment and entrenches both sides in their self-righteous indignation. As civilians on both sides hide in terror (one in their bomb shelters, the other hiding wherever they can), their political leaders play a game of chess to promote their position and prolong the fighting. When in actuality, neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government wants peace.

Hamas wants to subvert the P.A. efforts to get Palestine a higher status at the U.N. because that would make Hamas less viable in the coming Palestinian national elections. Its willingness to continue these symbolic (and more recently less symbolic and more substantive) launchings of missiles against Israeli targets are not aimed at winning anything. Though some may justify them morally as the response of the powerless to the ongoing evil of the Israeli occupation and its murderous day-to-day reality, we must also note that it is a cynical ploy by Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority’s past seven years of non-violence and seeking accommodation with Israel. At the same time, Palestinian non-violence is the last thing the Netanyahu government wants, hence its provocative policies and statements as it continues dunam by dunam to undermine the possibility of a two state solution that it deceptively claims to still support, and now escalating the violence against Palestinian civilians as its calling card for the forthcoming Israeli elections. Netanyahu is willing to endanger the lives of Israelis by failing to reward Palestinian non-violence from the P.A. but instead escalating violence against Gaza. It’s his ticket not only to reelection, but also to his legacy as “the Prime Minister who stood firm against outside pressure.”

Nothing Israel can offer short of ending the Occupation now and creating a politically and economically viable Palestinian state (along terms I’ve outlined in chapter 9 of my 2012 book Embracing Israel/Palestine) will change anything. A cease-fire will lead to continuation of an awful status quo. Yet the kind of generous offer I propose in my book is not going to happen until there is a much larger change in the consciousness not only of Israelis and Palestinians but of their champions and cheerleaders around the world.

In short, what is needed is a new global ethos of recognizing that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else alive today and the well-being of the planet as well. The path to homeland security for everyone and every country is a path of generosity. And that generosity has to take form both in consciousness and in action. Consciousness that is learned by hearing each other’s stories so that we are able to see the world from the others’ perspective. In Israel and Palestine, that must involve learning about each other’s histories to provide compassionate understanding for the current situation.

The action form: the U.S. should take the leadership with the other advanced industrial countries (the G-20) to launch a domestic and global Marshall Plan aimed at giving 1-2% of each country’s Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty to once and for all end global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care and to repair the damage done to the global environment. Such a program, financed from the trillions saved in military spending, and in part by a 1% Tobin tax on all global money transfers of more than a million dollars. This strategy would provide the world with a far more effective path to safety and security. If implemented in a true spirit of generosity, such an action would break the depressive certainty that every country has that no one cares about anyone else but themselves, and thus open the hearts of people in the Middle East who remain stuck in various demonizing visions of who the other “really is.”

To implement such a strategy, it will take average citizens around the world, like you and me, not only to demand an end to this senseless violence, but also to insist that our own countries reject the strategy of domination and adopt the strategy of generosity. As a symbolic statement of our support for this direction, I urge you to use this Thanksgiving to raise this idea of generosity and caring for others as the foundation for our global survival and as the only practical and realistic path to end the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians!!! And lovingly tell the partisans who will insist that what is needed is more support for the violence of one side or the other that their approach is really destructive to the well-being of the very people they claim to be serving, because the endless cycle of violence does damage both to the bodies and spirits of both Israelis and Palestinians. And then, if you can develop this capacity of compassion within yourself, provide empathy for the depth of their pain (try to understand their story – the story of those who will put you down for being too idealistic – because they too are in pain and can only be moved when their pain in listened to and understood). And then engage with them in visualizing a way to bring a lasting peace that doesn’t involve annihilating or expelling the other from the Holy Land! And recognize that the realists who insist that caring for others is unrealistic are actually the reason why we’ve never been able to eliminate war, poverty and oppression. So affirm the centrality of love and generosity, because in fact these provide the foundation for the only strategy that can possibly work.

To assist in this process, please read the following prayer or meditation early in the Thanksgiving meal, and then be prepared to face those who seek to minimize the seriousness of your statements or to tell you how unrealistic it is or how inappropriate since they don’t want to think of anything serious. Tell them that it’s time for them and for the world to be less “realistic,” (to the extent that realists allow “that which is” to shape their vision of “that which could be”) and more visionary, else we are condemned to endlessly repeat the self-destructive behavior being manifested in the current struggle in the Middle East. The path of the so-called “realists” has led to endless wars and destruction. Enough is enough! It’s time to stop being realistic and instead start insisting on the kind of world that we, and all humanity need and want. After Thanksgiving, contact your Congressional reps and tell them that you want the US to change its role from lead cheerleader for Israel to actually being substantively pro-Israel, understanding that the only way to be pro-Israel is to also be pro-Palestine, because the fate of both peoples is eternally interlocked and interdependent.

The Thanksgiving Meditation, Prayer or Guided Visualization

Today we give thanks to this incredible universe for all the beauty, the goodness and the miracles that surround us every day and to which we have given too little conscious attention. And we celebrate the ability to be with friends, neighbors, family or others on this holy day of joyful appreciation of all the good in our lives.

This is the right moment, then, for us to also put forward our prayers or intentions for a world of peace. We who recognize that our ability to live today enjoying all the benefits of North America was achieved in part through a genocidal struggle against the native peoples of this land are not willing to live through another period in which other peoples may be losing their lands to settlers or oppressive colonization.

This year it is hard not to be dismayed at the murdering that goes on between Israel and Palestine, and the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. This Thanksgiving some of us commit ourselves to doing all we can to stop the conflict and to start the process of non-violent, open-hearted reconciliation and peace. We reject the advice of the “political realists” who tell us that this struggle will go on forever, at untold levels of human suffering. Instead, we urge our own government to work with others to impose a cease-fire, and then to convene an international conference of the most powerful and spiritually responsible countries that can act together to build the new consciousness our planet so badly needs.

Some of us, whether or not we believe in God or Goddess or Spirit, are Spiritual Progressives—that is, people who want the world to be reorganized in ways that promote love, kindness, generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is. We spiritual progressives believe that the real source of strength for any country or people will come from the degree to which its neighbors and the people of the world see that country as a source of generous love, social justice, peace, non-violence and generosity toward all and environmental sanity toward the earth.

So on this Thanksgiving we call upon the world to actively involve itself with bringing peace and prosperity to all places where violence and wars continue to be waged. We call upon the advanced industrial countries to launch a domestic and global Marshall Plan by dedicating 1-2% of the GDP of the economically advanced industrial countries of the world, the G-20, to be used to eliminate poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and to repair the global environment—to be paid for by the trillions of dollars that will otherwise be spent on militarism and attempts to dominate and control the world. We know that this approach will require major political changes, and that is why we support the Network of Spiritual Progressives’ “Money out of Politics” campaign that goes way beyond affirming that corporations are not people and money is not speech. The ESRA also bans all private and corporate monies from national and state elections (check it out atwww.spiritualprogressiives.org). And we affirm the Unity of All Being, the oneness of all with all, and the fundamental interdependence of us who are celebrating Thanksgiving with all other people on the planet and commit ourselves to save this planet from environmental destruction.

And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we affirm our dedication to being unrealistic for peace, social justice, environmental sanity, and a world based on love, caring, kindness and generosity. In so doing, we will make realistic what at first seemed to be unrealistic. And so it is. Amen.

–Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of the Jewish and interfaith quarterly Tikkun magazine (in print by subscription and on line at www.tikkun.org), chair of the interfaith (and atheist-welcoming) Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley and San Francisco California www.beyttikkun.org. ,

Author: Embracing Israel/Palestine, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, Spirit Matters, The Politics of Meaning, with Cornel West: Jews and Blacks–Let the Healing Begin, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, Surplus Powerlessness: The Psychodynamics of Daily Life and Work and more

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24 Responses to Israel and Gaza: Enough Is Enough

Douglas Smith
November 19, 2012 at 6:18 am

Dear Rabbi Lerner ~

I have distributed your compassionate and thoughtful message (“Israel and Gaza: Enough Is Enough”) to my network, even though I take issue with it on a number of points. In general you tend to represent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a symmetrical one, where blame is to be apportioned even-handedly, despite the harangues of “all the usual suspects” to identify emotionally with one side or another. To break the cycle of violence, you call upon all parties to bargain in good faith with the prayerful encouragement of the international peace-loving community.

Factually, I believe you are in error in suggesting that Hamas sabotaged the peace process, fearing it would lose political standing if a lasting settlement was to come about. In fact, it is fairly clear from the journalistic record that Israel initiated the current round of mayhem in order to scuttle the promise of a comprehensive truce. They managed to do so by, first, by having the IDF shoot a 13-year old Palestinian boy on November 08 under the pretext of searching for an arms cache; and then on November 14 they went much further by assassinating Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of Hamas’ military wing in a rocket attack. According to Dr. Gershon Baskin, who negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit and who was facilitating peace negotiations with Mr. Jabari, what happened is as follows [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/opinion/israels-shortsighted-assassination.html]:

“My indirect dealings with Mr. Jabari were handled through my Hamas counterpart, Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, who had received Mr. Jabari’s authorization to deal directly with me…

“Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt.”

Reading over this now-defunct draft, one finds many points of agreement with your own peacekeeping proposals, including the willingness of Hamas to punish maverick elements who unleash rockets against Israel – even to the point of permitting Israel to bomb their rocket sites without retaliation.

With regards to your own proposal I am frankly astonished that you would propose that the USA take a leadership role in ameliorating the conflict, when since the days of Jimmy Carter that country under the guiding hand of AIPAC has steadfastly supported Israel militarily, economically and diplomatically, no matter what. If in the immediate future you are looking for an honest broker having no obvious stakes in the outcome, why not consider the People’s Republic of China, for instance?

You invoke the Holocaust complex as an explanation for the jitteriness of the Jewish people when facing rocket attacks that issue from Gaza, however infrequent and ineffectual. Yet the most hysterical voices in Israel seem to be coming from Yisrael Beiteinu, a group now merged with Netanyahu’s Likud that consists largely of Russian immigrants. Although they are not Holocaust survivors, these folks nevertheless advocate ethnic cleansing with the aim of achieving a Greater Israel stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.

As an explanation for Israeli passivity, you propose that the vast majority of the Israeli population know very little about the sufferings of the Palestinian people. How is this to be explained with regards to a well-educated polity, except through the same mechanism of denial which excused all those Good Germans from knowing about Jewish suffering during the Nazi Zeit?

Please explain, Rabbi Lerner, how a policy of appeasement can produce better results than it did in Neville Chamberlain’s time? Looking back to the Nazizeit, would today’s Holocaust survivors not wish that the Allies had blockaded, embargoed and generally isolated Germany before things got so badly out of hand?

Perhaps these Holocaust victims who are still so influential in Israeli politics are just re-enacting the trauma of the Warsaw Ghetto from a different perspective, by playing the role of the SS this time round. We may feel compassion for these crazed souls. But surely the first order of business is to deprive them of their deadly toys.

Of course we should all make every efforts to extend the olive bough, but in the case of intransigent nations with a psychopathic leadership class this may be an effective strategy only when we accept nothing of commercial value in return. No electronic components, no oranges, no machine-guns, nothing. Rather than just praying for a change of heart within the leadership caste, as humble consumers we can loosen some of the anguish in our hearts by making a sacred vow to boycott this tiny nuclear-armed apartheid state before it is too late.

But that doesn’t we shouldn’t keep praying just the same.

I close with a poem which I wrote on the occasion of last Gaza massacre. (I suspect that “kaza” in Old Yiddish does not really means cheese, but please forgive my poetic licence.)

One love.

The Hundred Year Siege

Kaza in Old Yiddish means cheese.
For reasons lost to time, that is what people
used to call the Jewish section of the city,
where they went to buy fresh produce.
Standing on the knoll above the ghetto,
one can imagine the pastel dwellings,
pockmarked with shell holes, as blocks
of rubbery emmental, such as were sold
in the delis that lined Einsteinstasse,
before it was reduced to rubble
one hundred years ago.

The decision by the ageing Gestapo not
to invade Kaza, apart from the periodic
stuka blitz, has been regarded as
a mixed blessing by the populace,
now in its fourth generation under siege.
The rabbinate is grateful to worship
in the grassy hollows where synagogues
once stood, but there is concern that prayer
under open skies invites a backward slide
into paganism with its torrid spectacles.

Starved and half-crazed, the survivors
spend their days crawling through rubbish
looking for rats to club. It has been
slim pickings since the wehrmacht welded
the sewers shut some ninety years ago.
Still going the rounds is that tired joke
about some jut-jawed American actor
exchanging his Ben Hur costume
for a Soylent Green lab jacket.

Now and then the partisans will
throw a machine-gun over the wall,
and always there’s somebody with
spunk enough to play the game.
First, you hear the rat-a-tat-tat.
Next come the stukas snarling.
Later, the airwaves crackle with
alerts about ghetto criminality.

Yes, our poets still sing of love.
But what is this abomination
that has smitten them?
Like Narcissus, they imagine
embracing a blond hunk,
while guzzling foul water
from puddles in the street.

“While it is true, as the Palestinians and their global supporters purport, that Israel can (and does) murder far more Palestinians than Hamas murders Israeli citizens, this ignores the suffering of citizens in S’derot who for years now have regularly faced rockets launched from Gaza that forced them to run to shelters to protect their families from the potential murderous impact of those Hamas generated missiles. And now millions of Israelis are once again experiencing the fear of mass annihilation. The rockets fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, reinforce the Holocaust traumas that pervade Jewish consciousness and provides the most right-wing elements in the Israeli government with precisely the kind of “evidence” it needs that there can be no two state solution (because the Palestinian Authority can’t control Hamas and hence can’t deliver a lasting peace agreement).”

Michael, as a stealth Zionist you are part of the problem and still expect us to believe you? I don’t think so. Look at your words I posted above and think about the real 64 year long Palestinian Holocaust caused by European and American Jews to a completely innocent peoples, the Palestinians made to pay for European Gentiles treatment of Jews. This is the gross inequity and basic human rights violation that you never address being a closet Zionist yourself, one of the European invaders trying to reign in the political Left and liberals to the Zionist cause. A two-state solution for Palestinians is no solution at all. Look at the fact of the split country that dooms it from the start as a viable separate state. And Palestinians really only have to be patient and wait out Jewish control over Palestine because by 2050 even in Israel Palestinian Arabs will outnumber and outvote in any real democracy Israeli Jews. Why not help Palestinians with real solution, like the Canaan Peace Plan.

Steve Lewis,you are obviously in the pay of Hamas and have shown yourself to be another left wing anti-Israel/anti-semitic troll.
I condemn equally Hamas,Israel,the settlers and radical extremist elements on all sides. Both sides are suffering-Hamas never has nor will recognize Israel,nor do they realize that Jews and Israelis too are human and in pain.

Alan D Hughes: I guess you are an ultra right wing Israel supporter: people like you and Hamas both deserve each other.
I condemn Hamas,Israel’s ultra right wing,the settlers all equally.
It makes me sick. Hamas has never looked at the suffering of Israel,nor has Israel and the settlers ever looked at innocent suffering and victims of Palestinians & Israelis who are both caught in this unholy crossfire. I guess all sides like war.

Rabbi lerner is such a compassionate person who exudes a spiritual enlightenment that he is very attractive to read,study, etc
But I also find I have a lot in common with what Douglas Smith has written – it resonates very strongly
Both sides are not equal – Israel does have the lion’s share of everything at the moment.
The position of the West and the US and the EU i particualrly disgraceful right now – we have armed Israel to the teeth, in fact, israel is now hysterically over-armed.
Obviously, this hasn’t always been the case but David GrOssman, the novelist, once wrote”THisis the first time in 2, 0000 years that we are on top..”
It says a lot
There has also been the case of extremmely negative leadership.

Nethnahyu has promoted an environment of fear and hatred – he has convinced Israelis that a state of perpetual warfare is necessary for israel’s survival and by default, his re-election is necessary.
The days of Rabin and the peace camp are now long gone. Rabbi lerner’s words were more heeded to then.
Hamas won the election in gaza in 2006 and i agree with Douglas – this has ot be recognized. The siege of Gaza has to be lifted
That’s a minimum

Thank you for your words and insight. Like all honest peacemakers, I’m sure you are used to being torn at from all sides. Please know that people of all backgrounds and traditions are inspired by the leadership you bring, and are praying alongside for lasting peace and justice.

You propose a peacekeeping force to keep the Arabs in Gaza from firing missiles at Israeli civilians.

Allow me to point out that such a force was created in Lebanon with the express purpose of keeping Hizbollah from re-arming, and yet they’ve apparently imported thousands of new missiles right under the noses of the UN peacekeepers.

Folks, Tikkun itself is just like Michael Lerner’s blog here, it’s a fraud, it’s window dressing for a bad religious ideology that dooms Judaism and its priesthoods from ever becoming a moral model universally. The elephant in the room that Jews have made Gentiles fearful of even mentioning is the historical and ideological fact Judaism is based on racism. It’s theology is based on separating Jews from the majority of humankind and the separation is not done in peaceful respect at all: like all racist ideologies, it’s foundation is that Jews are a superior race than Gentiles and despite all the attempts to cover this fact up it’s Scriptural basis cannot be hidden, it’s in the Torah and Talmud and don’t be fooled by the blanket ADL defense that all these Scriptures were made up by Gentiles as if racist white supremist Gentiles would spend their spare time learning all the ins and outs of rabbinical Talmudism. This post will no doubt be instantly labeled “anti-Semitism” as Michael has previously censored my posts because I blame Ashkenazim Jews like he is, like I am as well, for creating the hideous mess that is Israel in the first place. Unless and until the crime against humanity is exposed as such that is the Jewish religious war to capture Palestine from Palestinians there will be no peace with Palestinians. To them, to any person of ethical stature, what Western powers did in cahoots with Zionist Ashkenazim to destroy Palestine is criminal. How can Palestinians make peace with fascist invaders and occupiers? Who would want them too but Zionist Jews protecting their criminal enterprise from rightful anger from its victims.

If Michael was really the political visionary and spiritually wise guy he thinks he is, he’d own up to the racist ethnic cleansing ideology of Zionism that has no place in any modern democracy that treats all of its citizens without prejudice. The Muslims have it right when they claim Zionism is just another form of European Crusader mentality and is only a ruse for Western powers to establish their European control colony in the midst of Muslim Arabs. But lest you all think I want to see Israelis pushed into the sea, no I don’t, and being a true spiritual visionary unlike some prominent phonies I could mention making that claim, God has given me a spiritually based peace plan that protects all citizens of the Holy Land, Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Go to: http://biomystic.org/canaanpeaceplan.htm.

I’m sorry to be so harsh on Michael and his Jewish religion but it’s past time for us to let this particular Abrahamic religion continue on creating social havoc in its perpetual religious war with Gentiles. And please note, Judaism is not the only bad actor in the Abrahamic fold, Pauline Christians and Muhammad’s Muslims do their share of using God for cover for power mad ambitious males who aren’t content with rulership only in their own lifetimes but want to and have succeeded in reaching out from their graves to swindle millions of believers suckered by authority figures handing them Scripts and telling them what to do. Your priests, your ministers, your imams, your rabbis..

Judaism is in its End Times. God has given me the true Celestial Torah and it is the source of the Messiah-Christ-Anointed One commandment from the Most High. I teach it and you can learn it at: http://biomystic.org/celestialtorah.htm.

Have a truly Happy Thanksgiving everyone, you too, Michael. Read my stuff and learn where the real Torah came from.

The Middle East is the home of all three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So, they should be living in peace and harmony as religious cousins of each other. But will that ever happen? Only God knows.
The ball is in the court of Zionism. Why and how? Arab-Palestinians in particular and Muslims in general were devastated in 1917 and by the subsequent confrontations. As the time passed, both Palestinian-Arabs and Muslims in general, now accepted the reality of Israel being mandated by the UN with a border in 1947, but Israel is either discounting this honorable position or are too ambitious, as the occupation issue tells us. However, it is the occupation that is causing these recurrent conflicts and taking so many of lives, mostly from the Palestinians. The simple solution and possible peace could be achieved easily, if and only if Israel withdraw from all the occupied land and go back to the border of 1947, hence call for peace. Will Israel do that? Only God knows. Arab-Palestinians and Muslims would have embraced Israel and the Zionists as their religious cousins and forget the past pain, but they need a window of peace to do that. Who can convince and force Israel to go back to the 1947 border? Only God knows.

Steve Lewis: I am now sure that you are nothing but an internet troll and a racist anti-Jewish hater and a Hamas agent.
Why don’t you go back to your Hamas friends and get lost?! Your references to “Zionists” is offensive to me. It isn’t only Israel that is at fault here in this conflict,Hamas shares major blame,egged on by armchair generals and Hamas fools like you! A plague upon Hamas,a p[lague upon Ahmadinejad and a plague upon anti-semitic trolls like Steve Lewis!! I’ll be happy to endorse you to Hamas-you belong with them!

Steve Lewis,you are obviously,an anti-semitic,ignorant,pro-Hamas fool.
Why don’t you go and live with Hamas and become their “Toady”!
It’s anti-semitic haters like you and David Duke that should be banned from Tikkun.
Take your anti-Jewish bias elsewhere.
As for your Hamas supported propaganda,STFU!!

Marc, whenever my critics resort to schoolyard name-calling and slander to defend their positions I know I’ve won the debate. Here in America, there were European-Americans who befriended the indigenous peoples and to other European-Americans they were often referred to in highly negative terms as “Injun lovers”. I am one of these European-American Injun lovers whose worked with Native Americans now off and on for over 17 years helping in their efforts to reclaim lost ancestral lands taken by white European-Americans without any sort of compensation. Now here you are as European Jewish-American trying to copy the racism of Gentile European-Americans, only your racism is applied to Arab Palestinians as you call me, an “anti-Semite” completely forgetting Palestinians are Semitic peoples while you are probably just like me, Ashkenazim Jewish convert descended with only minute traces of real Semitic ancestry but that doesn’t stop you from calling me in so many words, an Semite-loving anti-Semite. The absurdity of your attack matches the irrationality of Zionist Jews from Europe actually thinking they could claim a land never their own as if international laws preventing invasion and occupation of other peoples countries did not apply to Jews, being “special” as in especially greedy and inhumane towards the human rights of Gentiles in their way.

Israel is a moral monstrosity in most every sense of that word. An ugly eyesore filled with bigots whose religion teaches them never to share, just take, take, and take some more. God’s finished with Judaism and Israel and Zionism. Abandoned completely now with the Megiddo discovery that completely overthrows all Jewish claims to Canaan/Palestine as based on Jewish myths without historical foundation, such as the great longevity of ancient Israel which turns out to be a nation that lasted less time as an independent nation than our own America.

I know you are frustrated to see your religion dying away but Jews won’t be alone in that once the Megiddo findings effect the Armageddon End Times on each and every Abrahamic religion starting with Judaism.

Rabbi (sic) Michael Lerner’s narrative depends on a deeply cynical reading of the words and actions of Israel’s leadership, and a conversely rose-tinted reading of that of the Palestinian leadership. Behind his flowery rhetoric of mindfulness, Lerner is an angry man.

On a more pragmatic level, Lerner ignores the history of successful peace talks in the region, versus those that were unsuccessful. Looking back to what happened with Nasser and Egypt there is reason to be optimistic that the Palestinian fantasy of wiping Israel off the map will one day fade, but not using the approach of Oslo. Change the Palestinian school textbooks, insist on a congruent message of two-state recognition and universal human rights delivered in both English and Arabic, and in a generation, peace will arrive.

The British Chief Rabbi Lord Sack spilled out the truth at BBC last week when he said:“I think it has got to do with Iran, actually.”

What he meant was, the 1.5 million native Palestinians living in Gaza concentration camp have never posed a threat to the the Zionist regime. But the current Israeli assualt on Gaza is Netanyahu’s desperate attempt to draw Obama into the war on Israel side in case Iranian ever try to come to rescue Gazans from US-donated F-16s.

Hey! Rehmat: I get it-you are an ignorant,hateful,anti-semitic troll.
Why don’t you STFU! And go back to Hamas,as you obviously work for them-I’m happy to endorse you to Hamas and Ahmadinejad!!
To: both Steve Lewis and Hehmat: Have some Nux Vomica!!!

Zionists claim that GOD made a covenant with Abraham giving his descendants right of occupation. Interesting piece of myth (or perhaps propaganda, but no actual proof). Then Yasser Arafat (not his real name) liked to claim that the “Palestinians” were there “since time immemorial”. Also not true. So, neither side has a good case for occupation and the rest of us need to spank them all and make them play nicely together.

Actually, Michael’s always been jealous of me because he knows I know more about the roots of Judaism than he does. Know for example, that the Jewish earthly Torah was ripped off from Egypt and done the typical Jewish remake job which butchered it. While the Egypt understood the celestial connections between heaven and earth, Jews stealing the Egyptian concept divorced astrological meaning from the earthly Torah and thus ruined it. Instead of ancient Egypt’s record of being the longest lasting continuous civilization on earth, the Jews with their botched job Torah created only a template for continuous religious warfare and the inevitable social and political instability and disruption continuous warfare would bring. Instead of lasting thousands of years, ancient Israel lasted less time as an independent nation than America. Judaism is a trumped up religion based on rabbinical liars and lying. The Megiddo finds of Israeli archeologists confirm the lies of an ancient Israel stretching back to a time of Abraham and Moses and David and Solomon. All crocks of baloney which makes ALL Torah/Tanakh/Talmud doctrines devoid of spiritual authority. You can’t get spiritual authority from fables and fictitious personages. Of course, rabbis having their careers at stake won’t tell you this and keep the Abrahamic ruse going that kills and kills and kills for control of territory. The only moral option for any Jew at this point is to renounce a bogus religion that is the foundation of 2500 years of non-stop Abrahamic religious warfare that has cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

For those interested in how God has provided for spiritual guidance even as Judaism, Pauline Christianity, Muhammad’s Islam, Bahai, Mormonism, and all the Abrahamic religions that base their theologies on the Bible stories as real history go down the historical discovery tubes, please go to: http://biomystic.org/celestialtorah.htm.

Celestial Torah Christianity shows with historical ancient astro-theological images and their meanings where the Messiah/Christ/Anointed One theology originates which is far older than Judaism or traditional (Pauline) Christianity. By divorcing astrological meaning from the earthly Jewish Torah, priests of Judah and now rabbis continue to promote a very false tribal ideology in place of a universal spiritual theology that is truly Messianic because it recognizes where God has placed the Humanitarian Model in the heavens where no man can touch it for spiritual guidance for us on earth.

For those interested in how God through the Son of Man tradition culminating in Jesus Christ’s Humanitarian Model reestablishes the One to one linkage between God and humanity, please go to: http://biomystic.org/gospelofhumanity.htm

The Gospel of Humanity reveals the identity of God and God’s Plan for humanity unlike Judaism which was not given that spiritual information because of fraudulent spiritual authority claimed by Jewish mystics and priests. So Jews were given nebulosity and vagueness and failed to recognize God’s restitution of the direct God/Humanity relationship plainly symbolized in Genesis I and known throughout the ancient world which reproduced that relationship in pagan mythologies of gods and human beings intertwined in destinies.

A new Christian Humanism is here as spiritual relief and passover guidance to avoid the End Times of Abraham as God takes the ax to the trees that have produced such bad fruit.

steve go post on your own site. You spout nonsense and you don’t sound too humanistic to me. I think there is freedom of religion in the United States and frankly your rantings are irrelevant to the discussion. If you want to find converts or haters, I don’t think most people here are interested. Most will bypass your nonsensical self-tirades and you call yourself a Christian? Jesus would be ashamed of you.